


Water

by Ori_Cat



Category: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - Michelle Paver
Genre: Gen, POV Third Person Objective, no-one referred to by name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-31 01:25:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: A short story about Torak’s father’s seal amulet.





	Water

The stream didn’t have a name - it was just one of those ephemerals that dry at the end of summer and revive with snowmelt from the mountains. The world was only beginning to turn towards spring, so at the moment it was heavy and thick and black, rushing between the boulders and small shrubs lining the banks. 

A man stepped onto one of the boulders, knocking in a pebble with a tiny sound. He watched the waters churn white and grey for a while, then, without averting his eyes, dug into the neck of his tunic and drew something out and over his head. He held it out over the water. 

The man looked exhausted and sorrowful, the kind of person who had used up all their tears on other tragedies already, but most of all he looked like he used to be someone else, once. Someone who wasn’t all of that. And that is the worst tragedy of all. 

Cold air rolled up off the stream, soaking into his feet, his ankles, his exposed hands. He didn’t seem to notice, breathing coming harder that was probably warranted considering the relief of the ground and cool of the air, arm trembling slightly. One watching would have guessed that he held a much greater weight than the small amber seal and leather cord could account for. 

A stick cracked in the woods behind him; brush rustled. “Are you - oh.” The woman broke off, still a careful few paces away. 

The man didn’t shift, didn’t look back towards her. The tiny seal pendant hung down, as though it yearned to be lost already in the rushing water, never to be found again. “It was her we got it from, you know,” he said. “It was her that told us - well -” He paused, searching for words. “She told us that when she died we would only have each other. We had to support each other. Not to forget we were a family.” 

Something hard had come into his eyes, settled in the small muscles around his mouth. “If this is what that means _I don’t want one anymore._ ” 

Quiet dropped over them again; neither seemed to quite know what to say or how to say it. Slowly and with great care, the man balled his free hand up into a fist at his side and then relaxed it again. 

“But -” she prompted. 

“But,” he agreed. That seemed to encompass it all. 

Somewhere in the forest, a bird called once and, receiving no answer, again. The waters poured on in front of them, an fractal ever-changing and ever the same, with small mats of pine needles and twigs caught in its eddies. 

The man gave a full-body shudder and scrubbed his free hand over his face, turning back towards her. Defeatedly, he pulled the cord back over his neck and stepped down, jarring his knees on the landing. The woman came and laid a hand on his arm, softly, as though soothing a frightened animal, and for a long while they only stood there, wrapped in the sound of their breathing and the swish of pine branches above. 

The woman spoke again: “We need to go.” 

They turned, and left the water’s edge, and went back down the valley. 

* * *

_Hush,_ the sea whispered on the stones. _Hush, hush._ The sun was just beginning to sink below the horizon, turning the world to a play of golden light and glimmers. The treeline came down close to the water, here, without cliffs or boulders or rough piles of driftwood, and there was a path that led out of the forest and onto the beach, that faded from pine needles to dirt to sand as one walked down it. 

There was a man coming down it now. He wore a loose cloak about his shoulders and his legs were wrapped against the cold and his way was slow and stiff and halting, as though every movement pained. He had to stop several times, to lean against a tree and draw deep ragged breaths, head bent down and one arm pulled tight against his body. Even despite his clothes, he shivered in the fine trickle of cold air that characterizes nights near water. 

Eventually, though, he reached the interface between shore and shingle, and stumbled to a halt, a black outline against the sunset, like a pillar carved of stone. A few disturbed pebbles fell back into place with a quiet series of clacks. 

Another wave spilled in over the beach, almost reaching his feet. It left seaweed tangled green and brown in the cracks between the rocks like long dark strands of hair. The man poked the closest tangle with the tip of one foot, something between anger and longing flashing over his face. In that moment he looked very human, very alone and lost and wounded, but most of all he looked like he used to be someone else, once, someone who wasn’t any of that. 

If he regretted that there was no sign. 

The man lifted his left hand out over the water, and something small hung on a cord between his fingers. In the rays of the setting sun it shone gold, and one could just make out the impression of four legs, and a head, and a small tail. 

For a long while all was still, save for the lapping of the waves. Fine clouds drifted across the sunset, casting the world from dark to light to dark again, and the sun itself thinned from disc to segment to a sliver like the lunula on a fingernail. The last beams turned the scrub along the beach’s edge the colour of honey and kindled in the man’s hair. 

The man seemed to make a decision. He balled up his fist and cast the small glittering thing out towards the waves. It would have been a better throw if he had been able to make it left-handed, but it was enough. He watched the thing catch one more pinprick of light at the top of its arc and then begin to fall. 

The sea is always hungry. It bites endlessly at the edges of the land, engulfs the sun and the stars every night to spit them out on the other horizon. So it swallowed the cord and the stone with barely a sound, a tiny black splash marring the bright mirror of the surface for a moment before spreading out and dissipating. 

The man released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Then he turned and slowly, stumblingly disappeared back into the green-dark line of the trees.


End file.
